This project is a theatre and brewery in the Mill City district of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and my goal was to create relationships between these programs. What I discovered when I dove deeper was that there was a dichotomy between these two programs, and the one connection was that they are driven by heavy mechanical systems. In application, I decided to map out where these mechanical systems may be, expose them, and conceptually create space within. Where this took me was to the understanding that these mechanical systems revealed are modeled after the primal way of system exposure before architects started to conceal all these pipes and structures. I used this as a model for the rest of my project.

My theory of hyper reconstructivism is applied when I decided to do a gravity-fed brewery as the organization for my project. Before the warehouse was used for a brewery, the most efficient way of brewing was from the top to bottom. I wanted to ensure that the users would be able to visualize and occupy the spaces within the steps of the brewing process. Users can navigate through all five floors and explore how this technique works. Additionally, I decided that my theatre would be modeled after the traditional Shakespearean Globe theatre. This also goes back to the idea of hyper reconstructivism because of its retrieval of the original design of a theatre that is meant for the production of plays. This driving factor of taking the seemingly old-fashioned way of design is representative of the culture of this Mill City and is continued throughout my whole project.

I decided to expose my structure of trusses and even go so far as to lift all the buildings 30’ so that systems are exposed and understandable to the users, inside and out. The perforated facade was inspired by the Mill City ruins right next to my site through evoking the feeling of the rusted steel and brick of which it is composed. The cladding is perforated to provide transparency of systems from the outside-in and create lighting effects throughout every space. Transparency became a main formal operation for this idea of exposure. This is a building that is built upon ruins which has a heaviness to it that I needed to embrace. Rather than intentionally create a beautiful building that looks like the rest, I provided an exposed building that evokes the feeling of this griminess of the ruins of this town. I think overall this project provides an understanding to the user into the process of all these elements within the brewery, theatre, and everything that goes with it.